Do you remember the Facebook group “I bet I can find 1,000,000 people who dislike George Bush!“? The group easily attracted more than a million people with Facebook members joining willingly and spreading the group’s popularity virally to all their friends. It all looked like an innocent way to express one’s feelings about the president of the US but it looks like in some countries such activity can be viewed as far from innocent and can even result in arrest.

I have just heard that a man has been arrested in Croatia for creating a Facebook group with a very similar name and a much less ambitious goal. A couple of month ago a guy, Niksa Klecak, created a group called “I bet I can find 5,000 people that hate the Prime minister“.

The reason for this was in the financial policy of the current Croatia government along with its Prime minister. The thing is that in the recent months the Croatian government headed by the Prime minister Ivo Sanader has been encouraging people in the country to spend less money to better cope with the recession and the world financial crisis. The head of the country even said publicly that he would not allow the wages in the country to grow.

These ideas have not been popular among the people in the country, obviously, and they started protesting everywhere, including on Facebook which happens to be the most popular social network in Croatia. Basically people said that the ministers should spend less money themselves instead of making people earn (and spend) less. There has even been created a dedicated group on Facebook intended specifically to demonstrate the government that the ministers should learn to save money and spend less, not the people of the country.

One of such acts of protest was the group created by Niksa Klecak which currently has over 7,000 people instead of the 5 thousand he wanted to bring in. But the main problem with it was that the guy was not just some regular citizen unhappy with his Prime minister and the financial ideas of the government - he is actually the president of one of the local branches of the youth of SDP (social democratic party) which is in opposition to the government in Croatia. And as a member of the political opposition his actions are obviously more noticeable - especially when he chooses a platform like Facebook to make people hear what he wants to say and easily gets even more people to join him than he initially wanted.

But the result of this situation is simply outrageous as yesterday the guy was arrested by the police that claimed he kept some Nazi symbols and propaganda at home. When they could not find any evidence, they claimed he had links to child porn somewhere and that could be another reason for the arrest. Eventually Niksa Klecak was let go by the police for lack of evidence but the social networks and the local media outlets are all abuzz about these actions of the police.

To people in Croatia it seems obvious that the guy is persecuted for his loud protests against the government and the Prime minister. In fact, the situation even resulted in a new group created on Facebook with its name translated like “Break into my place, you Gestapo wannabes. Croatia isn’t a police state!” where Facebook users protest against the prosecution of people unhappy with the policy of the government and the recent measures.

But the most dangerous thing is that it already looks like a trend in Croatia with a similar situation from a year ago involving a guy who posted videos with the country’s politicians saying stupid things. And to me it obviously looks like the police in Croatia have already learned how to track protesters online, social networks like Facebook included, and how to arrest them for any number of dubious reasons only to make people stop complaining online. I am not happy about watching freedom of speech violated in yet another European country.  //12.01.08 //Svetlana Gladkova